Imperfection.

Why hello, blogosphere…It’s been a while. I’ve been quite the absentee for a while now. Perhaps I’ve been overwhelmed by other commitments. Perhaps my writing is subject to the fleeting nature of the seasons. Perhaps I lost inspiration. At any rate, I think I’m back on the writing wagon. A fitting introduction for this post, which concerns my “One Word” for 2014: Imperfection.

Why fitting? Because Perfectionist Ashley would have looked at a 9 month hiatus from the pursuit of blogging as a failure that should be swept under the internet rug. Cancel that domain. Delete the account. Hope no one ever asks me again about blogging. However, I’m on a little crusade to battle perfectionism in my life, which I started to explore in this NASPA WISA Blog Post a few months ago. In honor of this, I have chosen “Imperfection” as the word that I hope to use to define the next year.

For those who aren’t familiar with the One Word concept, it’s sort of like a New Year’s Resolution, but instead of choosing a goal, you choose a single word to embody and explore for the year. My previous words have been Change and Momentum. I can’t help but feel that Imperfection has a decidedly different character than the previous words. My One Word always has something to do with what I can become in the coming year, and Imperfection might seem like a cop-out to some. Am I trying to give myself a pass to screw up over the next year? How unprofessional/childish/capricious/blah blah blah…

But wait. I am giving myself a pass to screw up. Well, I’m trying to, at least. I’m trying to exercise self-compassion in the moments of screwing up. I’ve already started to practice this philosophy and I’m feeling pretty good about it so far. Because let’s be honest: I’ve been screwing up royally for my whole life at various times. And I can say that telling myself “Hey, it’s okay, you’re still an awesome person and people love you” as opposed to “OH MY GOD you really messed that one up, there’s no recovering from that, everyone will be so disappointed in you!” makes a pretty big difference.

I hope to write about my journey into Imperfection here. But if I get busy and forget, then oh well. I’m still a pretty cool person.

And for good measure, here’s a very nice picture of imperfection. This was on New Year’s Eve and I hope that my year is something like this. I was having an awesome time and didn’t even care that I look borderline rabid in this selfie with my best friend. May all of 2014 have this level of delighted abandon!